But the 35th president of the United States also had a gift for making enemies of one-time friends. As such, many of these factions and people were forced to practice self-preservation, at any expense. His father had not taught him how to deal with this type of issue.
John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy were trying to eliminate the Mafia (a group rumored to have helped him win the 1960 election), the CIA (the embarrassment over the revelation of the Bay of Pigs debacle forced the Mayor of Dallas, Earl Cabell‘s brother Charles to lose his job as Deputy Director of the CIA), dump LBJ from the ticket in 1964 (a fate Johnson’s ego could not live through), prevent Israel from getting nuclear weapons (note FDR was not fully behind the creation of Israel or European powers that profited from British colonization), and attacking the international drug trade in Vietnam.173 Kennedy had also made himself an enemy to General Edwin Walker of Dallas and the John Birch Society.
Another party acting on self-preservation was J. Edgar Hoover who the Kennedys hated and who hated the Kennedys with equal fervor.174 For all these reasons, the Kennedys had created many enemies; some with whom he shared the White House and his Administration.
So could any of these people or groups have had enough power and persuasion to assassinate John F. Kennedy?
There are always those people behind the scenes who are keepers of powerful people’s secrets. These people are usually personal assistants, right-hand men, or personal secretaries. Though they don’t always know it, they too hold great power and could also be considered threats to their boss’s enemies.
*****
THERE ARE ALWAYS THOSE PEOPLE BEHIND THE SCENES WHO ARE KEEPERS OF POWERFUL PEOPLE’S SECRETS.
THESE PEOPLE ARE USUALLY PERSONAL ASSISTANTS, RIGHT-HAND MEN, OR PERSONAL SECRETARIES.
THOUGH THEY DON’T ALWAYS KNOW IT, THEY TOO HOLD GREAT POWER AND COULD ALSO BE CONSIDERED THREATS TO THEIR BOSS’S ENEMIES.
Evelyn Lincoln, Kennedy’s personal secretary for twelve years, was privy to things even the First Lady did not know. Lincoln shared much of her knowledge of these secrets and enemies in her book, “Kennedy and Johnson.” She had intimate knowledge of the power plays in Washington during her tenure as President Kennedy’s secretary and could exhibit evidence of the dislike of the Kennedys by Hoover and his alliance with Lyndon Baines Johnson.175 Evelyn Lincoln knew that LBJ would not be on the 1964 ticket and worried about JFK’s visit to Dallas. LBJ’s presidency, once established, gave J. Edgar Hoover a job for life; and Hoover had plenty of power and information on the highest ranking officials in the world. Other facilitators were the men of Suite 8F who were worried JFK would take away their tax shelters. The men of Suite 8F were part of the LBJ corruption network in Texas and with their oil-rich bank accounts they could provide funding for the operation of killing a president.176 And of course, the Military Industrial Complex (a faction former President Eisenhower warned about) had their dislike of the Kennedys. Later, it was discovered that Robert Surrey was General Edwin Walker’s right hand man and that he was the one responsible for having the ugsome ‘Wanted for Treason’ pamphlets printed the day JFK was assassinated.
But the most subversive hatred came from that ghostly branch of government President Harry S. Truman had begun in 1946 to fill a void for the “lack of coordinated intelligence in Washington; the Central Intelligence Group.”177 Twenty months after its genesis, the decision was made to ‘pull the plug’ on both the Central Intelligence Group and the National Intelligence Authority operations and convert them into one entity. Finally by 1947, the CIA and the National Security Council were both generated under the National Security Act of 1947, allowing the CIA to “be responsible for discovering intelligence, securing its validity, and deciding the level of national security.”178 Truman had created a Shelleyesque monster not unlike Frankenstein in its part CIA, part NSC and part OSS body.
By the time John F. Kennedy had become President, the CIA was a powerful governmental force. Former President Eisenhower had allocated millions of tax dollars to build the CIA headquarters in the deep-forested area of Langley, Virginia in 1959.179 It didn’t take long for this new defender of national security to begin to resemble a Mafia crime syndicate. As author and University of Georgia Professor of Law Donald E. Wilkes, Jr. describes the agency in 1975:
“Lavishly but secretly funded, unrestrained by public opinion, cloaked in secrecy, conducting whatever foreign or domestic clandestine operations it wished without regard to laws or morals, and specializing in deception, falsification, and mystification, the CIA was riddled at all levels with ruthless, cynical officials and employees who believed that they were above the law, that any means were justified to accomplish the goals they set for themselves, and that insofar as their surreptitious activities were concerned it was justifiable to lie with impunity to anyone, even presidents and legislators. Many of these individuals, thinking he was soft on communism, that he would reduce the size of the military industrial complex, and that he was to blame for the Bay of Pigs disaster (the failed CIA-sponsored invasion of Cuba in 1961), hated and despised Kennedy. The CIA routinely circumvented and defied attempts by the executive and legislative branches to monitor its activities. It was involved in innumerable unlawful or outrageous activities. It illegally opened the mail of Americans. It interfered with free elections in foreign countries and arranged to destabilize or overthrow the governments of other countries. It plotted the murder of various foreign leaders. It arranged to hire the Mafia to help with some of these proposed murder plots.”180
One month after John F. Kennedy was murdered; former President Harry Truman warned the world of the monster he created:
I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency—CIA… for some time I have been disturbed by the way the CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas. We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about how the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historical position and I feel that we need to correct it.181
By 1963, there had been several CIA assisted coups including Guatemala and Iran, as well as “shadow government assassinations and assassination attempts on/of José Figueres, “Papa Doc” Duvalier, Fidel and Raul Castro.”182 The CIA became a force with which to be reckoned, and the transformation paralleled the elegance of Camelot. The term ‘spying’ was replaced by the politically correct phrase ‘intelligence gathering’ and covert operations included wire-tapping, propaganda, and counter-insurgences.183 Ironically, in 2013, fifty years after this, the National Security Administration has admitted to doing the very same things.184
The CIA covert actions and problems with Cuba though, along with Vice-President LBJ’s scandals, caused the most embarrassment, as well as failure for the counter-intelligence portion of JFK’s presidency. This may have led to mixed feelings for the president as he was obsessed with covert operations and secrecy. He loved reading Ian Fleming’s James Bond books and had even recommended them to CIA Director Allen Dulles.185 The CIA had tried to appease the president in as many ways as they could while still maintaining their objectives. It was no secret to the CIA that both JFK and RFK wanted Castro out of the way, so the CIA set out to find ways to do that. The Church Committee, (yet another governmental committee appointed to investigate assassination conspiracies) convened and found no less than eight separate plots against Castro during JFK’s presidency. These ranged from an attempt to give him a poisoned wet suit for scuba diving to poisoned cigars to “a more determined effort, through agents recruited by the Mafia, to poison his food.”186 So when the Bay of Pigs failed, the Kennedys were crushed; both personally and politically.
For his part as president, JFK took responsibility for the failed
attempt to overthrow Castro. But privately, he blamed the CIA, forcing Allen Dulles, who ironically (or maybe not so ironically) would become a member of the Warren Commission on JFK’s assassination, into resignation.187 Kennedy then implemented National Security Action Memorandum Number 55, transferring control of paramilitary operations to the Defense Department. There is no doubt that JFK’s faith in the CIA was severely undermined by the Bay of Pigs debacle.188 Could all these things have led to a CIA involvement in the JFK assassination? Several incriminating coincidences give credence to the theory including:
• Lee Harvey Oswald‘s friend in Dallas, oil man and rumored CIA operative George de Morhenschildt was also married to Abraham Zapruder‘s former business partner, Jeanne LeGon.189
• In the summer of 1963, pro-Castro Oswald publicly scuffled with the nation’s most well-known anti-Castro group – the DRE – and their arrests and resulting debates were covered on radio, TV and in the newspapers. The DRE was financed and directed by the CIA’s Miami propaganda and counter-intelligence bureau.190
• Author Jefferson Morley’s discovery that the CIA liaison officer to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, George Joannides, was from 1962-64 the case officer for DRE, the very same Cuban exile group with which Oswald had had multiple interactions in the summer of 1963. See above.191
• CIA money paid to an “Oswald Project.”192
• FBI director J. Edgar Hoover told LBJ the day after the assassination that someone had impersonated Oswald in Mexico City in September 1963 according to CIA wiretaps and photos. That part of Johnson’s presidential tapes – fourteen minutes – was erased and considered lost until this was found.193
• A typewritten letter from Oswald was sent to the Soviet Embassy in Washington DC two weeks prior to the assassination saying Oswald had met with Comrade Kostin in Mexico City. It showed up two days prior to the assassination because the FBI had stopped and searched it, as it did with all mail going to the Soviet embassy. Following the assassination, the Soviets considered the letter proof of a U.S.-based conspiracy and gave it (back) to the FBI. This document actually did show up in the Warren Commission Report.194
• The Warren Commission, which concluded in 1964 that Oswald acted alone and was not part of a conspiracy, was never told about the CIA’s possibly relevant anti-Castro activities, despite the fact that former CIA director Allen Dulles was a Warren Commission member.195
• Withheld ‘classified’ documents numbering over 1,100 from the CIA concerning the assassination of JFK.196
• The following quote from a Life journalist, Andrew St. George, interviewed by Gaeton Fonzi:
Sometime in the early Fifties… assassination became an instrument of U.S. national policy. It also became an important branch of our invisible government, a sizable business, and a separate technology involving weapons and devices the ordinary taxpayer paid billions for but was never permitted to see, except perhaps in the Technicolor fantasies of James Bond flicks.”197
But was there a secret war between President Kennedy and the CIA with FBI aid? Public evidence does not support it. What it does support is that the JFK administration was no different from the administrations before and those after in using covert operations. Conflicting quotes from President Kennedy cause doubt for CIA support but his actions speak differently. A little over six months after the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy approved Operation Mongoose, a secret plan to overthrow Castro involving four hundred American employees, two thousand Cuban agents, a small Navy and Air Force and more than fifty business fronts.198 Their activities included intelligence gathering, minor sabotage, and propaganda.199 Later CIA covert activities spread to the Far East, Africa, and Latin America. The CIA was becoming far too powerful, even in 1963. In an article written in The New York Times, by JFK’s close friend Arthur Krock, the writer quotes a high-ranking official in the government as saying:
“The CIA’s growth was likened to a malignancy which this ‘very high official’ was not even sure the White House could control … any longer. If the United States ever experiences [an attempt at a coup to overthrow the government] it will come from the CIA and not the Pentagon. The agency represents a tremendous power and total unaccountability to anyone.” 200
Every president since JFK has used the CIA to hide the darkest secrets our government possesses. This secrecy handling has, in modern times been shared by the FBI, Homeland Security, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the National Security Agency. Should Americans have the right to know about them all? Who determines what the American public can and cannot know? What does keeping secrets say about character?
In 1963, Orville Nix had never questioned these things. He counted on his government to protect him from evil. He never thought of how they protected him, just that he was protected from communists, nuclear warheads, and terror. As for keeping secrets, he was firmly against it and raised his son to think the same way.
“If you don’t have your word, you have nothing,” he told his son, “and keeping secrets is like telling lies… lies that always come back to bite you in the butt.”
The phone began to ring again for the twentieth time that day. Before the second ring, Orville answered it.
“Hello?” he said.
A muffled male voice, like spoken through a blanket of fog, came through the black telephone receiver. “You need to keep your mouth shut or someone will shut it for you,” he said with no detectable accent. Orville could hear clicking in the background.
“Who is this?” Orville responded.
“Keep your mouth shut or you’ll find out,” the voice said. The next sound Orville heard was the dial tone.
Orville hung up the phone and stood there looking at it. He then walked across the room, locked his front door then went back across the kitchen to lock the back door. In the twenty years he had lived there he had only locked all the doors one time, when he, Ella and Junior had taken a week-long vacation. He would find himself locking the doors nightly from that day on. He wouldn’t tell Ella or his family about this phone call until several months later after receiving several more.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
UPI, RUMORS AND THE CIA
“The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings.”
John F. Kennedy201
The doorbell at 2527 Denley rang promptly at 1 P.M. on Wednesday, December 11, 1963. Orville answered it to see a diminutive man with a kind face smiling at him. It was Penn Jones.202 This would be the first of several meetings between the two men.
“Mr. Nix? Mr. Orville Nix?” Penn asked as Orville opened the screen door emblazoned with an iron work flamingo.
“You must be Mr. Jones,” Orville replied as he held out his right hand to shake in greeting. “Come in, come in. Would you like some coffee or a glass of iced tea?”
“Coffee would be great, Mr. Nix, just black.” After he showed Jones into the living room, Orville noticed the man reaching to open his briefcase as Orville walked into the kitchen to make the coffee. Jones took some papers out.
“Mr. Nix,” Jones said while Orville was in the kitchen, “I hope you will be patient with me. You see, I think there’s something funny going on. I don’t know your political leanings, but I think that ‘ole hound dog faced’ LBJ has had his men in the military kill our President.”
Orville came back in with two cups of coffee; one black, one with sugar and cream.
“My son feels the same way, Mr. Jones.”
“Call me Penn, call me Penn,” he interjected. “Your son, huh? Is he a college student?”
“Naw, he works for the Appraisal District and Monkey-Wards on the weekends doing accounting. He’s a Republican.”
Penn smiled and said, “Well, kids will do what kids will do.”
Orville smiled at this funny, but intelligent man. He took an instant liking to him.
“Well, I don’t own it anymore Penn, UPI does, but I have a copy of it if you’d like to watch.”
“Oh please, may I?”
“Sure thing, let me get it,” Orville replied.
Orville excused himself and went to the bedroom to get his projector and screen. He had the copy of his film hidden under the mattress. He set the equipment up and turned off the lights. They both watched it several times. With each viewing, Penn would move closer and closer to the screen. After about twenty minutes of watching the film, Penn rose and stood right in front of the center of the screen. The footage played against his beige shirt and hat like a fabric cartoon.
“I’m no photo expert Orville, but I see things. Like there, right there.”203 He pointed to a dark shadow in the center of the pergola. “You see that?” Penn asked excitedly. “It looks like a man holding a rifle.” Orville couldn’t make out what it was Penn thought he saw. Each time the film played, Penn pointed to the same place. It wasn’t the place Orville thought the shots came from, but he didn’t want to embarrass himself or his new friend by saying so.
“Do you mind if I call some friends about seeing your film?” Penn asked him. “Well Penn, I’d rather you not use my name. You see, I have a government job and I don’t want them to get wind of my film and then find some reason to let me go. It happens you know.”
Penn nodded his head in agreement.
“I don’t blame you, Orville, you can never be too careful. In fact, I don’t think you should tell many people you took this. I think you would be safer if you didn’t. Well, I’ll get back to you. Thank you for letting me come by and for letting me see the film. I do believe you have something of great importance here.”
The Missing JFK Assassination Film Page 13